Flattr Founder Faces 8 Months In Prison Due To Rejection Of Appeal in Pirate Bay Case
TorrentFreak has come out with an article on the situation with the legal problems of the Pirate Bay founders. The Swedish Supreme Court has rejected the leave to appeal in the trial. This essentially means that the sentences in place given to the founders of the file-sharing site will stand. The founders, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström, all received sentences of different length, but combined they are required to pay back $6.8 million in damages.
Would Transparency In Company Financials Increase Innovation?
A few days ago I listened to Horace Dediu's Critical Path and it got me thinking that would governments be able to increase innovation and competition through more transparency in the economy. Dediu talked about the movie business in one the more recent shows and he stated it many times that it is very hard to analyse the industry at large as they do not provide any figures on how different players are doing.
Further into the podcast, he went on to explain the findings of his study and more specifically how movies are financed as well as how the accounting works in the industry. Having listened to his findings, I completely understand why there is so little innovation and disruption taking place in the industry.
The lack of innovation was put in concrete explanation in Fred Wilson's blog post on AVC yesterday where he argues that scarcity is a bad business. He writes how he wanted to find something interesting to watch through many different legal movie services, but was unable to find anything worthwhile. In the end he had to resort to a "foreign rogue site", as he put it.
Why Elisa's Blockade Is Such A Big Thing
The court's order to make Elisa block access to certain websites became our most retweeted story yesterday. It received almost 1500 retweets in about 24 hours. I'm sure the plaintiff didn't anticipate the implications this will have, not only on Elisa but on a variety of other things - potentially even harming themselves. The more significant result to this is perhaps that Finland received a lot of negative publicity in the digital media space for its court's decision. In a time when countries are competing for appeal in the eye of digital media entrepreneurs, a lot of potential candidates saw Finland's position diminish. This may sound far fetched, but it really isn't. Let me explain why.
Save Taxes Through A Foreign Company
Note: “Road To Exit: Start-up’s First Year” is a practical blog series addressing the most common legal questions and problems that a start-up company and its management faces during their first year of operation. The series is sponsored by Attorneys at Law Borenius Ltd.
For a company with genuine international business that is not confined to a single country, it can be worthwhile to consider international options when it comes to taxation. Startups that do not require the actual work being done completely in Finland can consider settling in another country with a more favourable tax climate for the shareowners. For IT-related firms and services this is especially true. Companies that require the actual work to be done in Finland have more limited possibilities to optimise their taxation, though it is still possible.
Old Media Sues New Media: Case TV-Kaista
A huge group of Finnish old media companies and different organisations are wishing TV-Kaista a Merry Christmas in the form of a lawsuit for TV-Kaista's service offering, according to Helsingin Sanomat. TV-Kaista has become famous in Finland (and outside Finland as well) to enable television watching regardless of time and location - up to two weeks that is. TV-Kaista offers the possibility to view any of the 11 Finnish televison channels over the internet two weeks back. This does not go down well with MTV Media, Sanoma Television, Yleisradio, Kopiosto, Teosto and Sound and Video producers' association.
